When stretch'd on one's bed
With a fierce-throbbing head,
Which preculdes alike thought or repose,
How little one cares
For the grandest affairs
That may busy the world as it goes!

How little one feels
For the waltzes and reels
Of our Dance-loving friends at a Ball!
How slight one's concern
To conjecture or learn
What their flounces or hearts may befall.

How little one minds
If a company dines
On the best that the Season affords!
How short is one's muse
O'er the Sauces and Stews,
Or the Guests, be they Beggars or Lords.

How little the Bells,
Ring they Peels, toll they Knells,
Can attract our attention or Ears!
The Bride may be married,
The Corse may be carried
And touch nor our hopes nor our fears.

Our own ****** pains
Ev'ry faculty chains;
We can feel on no subject besides.
Tis in health and in ease
We the power must seize
For our friends and our souls to provide.

A friend asked me
how to be a writer.
I wanted to say,
lock yourself in a room,
scream until you have
a poem and no voice.
Open your veins and bleed
until you know that your bones
are pure words and sorrow.
Act as if you slit your own throat
and all you can bleed
are your own regrets
and all of the darkness
you boxed up for inspiration.
Write your mom a letter,
tell her you're leaving
and you won't be back for awhile
Because being a writer is traveling
through all seven layers of Hell
and denying anything is wrong.
Forget loving yourself
when all you have is a pen and paper
fused to your wrist
and Jesus is tapping at your skull
saying turn back now.
Warn the neighbors that if they smell burning
It's just your soul
clawing at the front door trying to get in.
Learn how to be alone.
Learn how to lose everything you have
in order to feel release,
learn how to only feel deceased
from now on.
A friend asked me
how to be a writer.
All I said was
don't

What if every little thought
That lives inside your head
Instead of hiding away in there
Was spoken out, was said?

Would you be embarrassed?
Would you hate your mouth?
Would you rather be mute
Than let the truth come out?

What if every little thing
That people thought of you
Instead of being tucked away
Was heard, was listened to?

Would you be ashamed?
Would you cover your ears?
Would you rather be deaf
Than let the truth come near?

And what if every image
That passes through your thoughts
Was freed from its prison
To roam until it rots?

Would you be disgusted?
Would you look away?
Would you rather be blind
Than see your thoughts at play?

He doesn't burn photographs
He doesn't join therapy sessions
He doesn't smoke too many cigarettes
Nor he drown himself into alcohol
He scratches his wounds daily
And never let them heal
He doesn't try to get rid of the pain
Instead he let it grow on him
He waters the seed of sorrow with his tears
He feeds it with the manure of old memories
He takes it to sleep with him
And nurtures it in himself
Till the moment when every single drop of his blood gets replaced by this pain
Until his fragile heart can bear no more
And his soul starts overflowing with emotions
That's when he dip his pen into this pain
And empty his heart on a piece of paper
He bares his soul for us to feel
He creates poetry that the world would cherish for centuries to come

With people
The only question that matters
What else can there be
Besides our feeble perceptions
Asking us
What I am to you,
And
What are you to me?

She wore a windbreaker as red
as her parents voting habits,
and smoked American Spirits
as rough as the next-door
skateboarder's hands.

At 18, she was bored by
teen-aged touch,
and looked towards the
thirty-five year-old avant-garde
painter, who meandered in his
sun room, like a soul
pretending to be lost.

At 20, her parents told her
to go to college, to go to
'some place other than here'.
So, she went and had skinny,
Greek fingers with chipped nail-polish,
dip down and inside of her, without
judgement, without thought, and,
with this touch, she felt free.

At 24, she was an undergrad with
an apartment and a guy named 'Blake',
and Blake said Brown and she said State.
And when Blake left, she felt complete
despite losing something meaningful.

And when her story started to go on forever,
her body spread across the pavement like
seeded jam on burnt toast, scraped thin,
without image and without future, lost
inside crevices and cracks, a memory
or thought, wandering nothingness.

I can feel it.
The wind which caressed your face
brushes by me
and leaves me
breathless
again.
The miles are not real,
state lines and roads apart,
but not
in all the same.
The sun sets and I see
your face in the sky
and feel your arms
around me.
You are still so close.
Days pass
and we fly through the sky
while the moon bears its stolen light
onto the ocean floors,
and the waves carry your
laughter and your words
over the sand and grass and
into my ears and over my
mind
and the sun rises with
a gentle and calming touch
into my arms and over my
body
to start the day
and I find
that you are still
not so far away.

It rained for three straight days
during my first visit
to you.
Fitting. I should have expected as much.
Especially if it corresponds to your happiness,
I can only be more thrilled
about rain
and what it brings down with it
and the slates it washes clean.

We drank with reservations
and read poetry with gusto
and fell to the floor with love
as the thunder clapped across the
valley
and the rain poured from our skin.

You are small,
not even close to helpless,
but I would face down anything
so that your hands may stay and fit
so delicately in mine and
so your lips would find mine
again.

When we met, finally,
and I felt your frame fall into mine,
trusting me enough for that
so soon,
I was honored,
and I knew that the fears I had
about what this would be like,
what you might be like,
what we might be like,
were unfounded,
and very complicatedly so.

Wouldn't it have been easier
to despise the other?
But no,
instead we fell into rhythm
as if we had never been out of sync,
we fell  into and onto each other
time and again
in ways that could only be described as
perfection.

I saw you gaze onto me
with a mystique only Picasso himself
would be able to render,
so I lost myself in your eyes
with words I've known for
long and with thoughts I could
finally say.

It rained for three straight days,
but on the day I left
the sun beamed through the sky.
So I left,
with kisses and kind words,
and it wasn't until I was on
the excruciating road back
that I realized
I was leaving home
for the second time
in only one trip.